These acorn dot number coloring worksheets are perfect for fall! My son doesn’t like coloring very much, but he does like using his dot pens! I made these fun worksheets for him to practice identifying numbers 1-10.
Using dot pens (or color with crayons), spot and dot all numbers 1-10. There are two pages of worksheets. They are divided into groups 1-5 and 6-10. Spot the numbers and dot (or color) accordingly. Download your free PDF worksheet: Acorn Number Coloring
Pumpkin Counting and Coloring
This is a fun math skills worksheet to help your preschooler visualize quantities. You can use your dot markers again for this pumpkin coloring worksheet or color in the pumpkins with crayons. Look at the number on the left and then color the same number of pumpkins. Download and print your free PDF: Pumpkin Coloring
Fall Counting
Get in the fall-spirit with this math worksheet full of cute fall shapes. Count how many of each picture are shown in the box on the left. Then write your answer. Download and print your free PDF: Fall Counting
My son loves numbers and counting! I made “I Spy” worksheets for him to practice counting and writing his numbers. There are lots to choose from, including a super cute Fall I Spy worksheet to go along with these acorn dot number coloring worksheets.
Apple Counting Activity
For a more hands-on counting experience, I made an Apple Counting game with flashcards and pompom apples. Download these free flashcards and apple tree picture for your preschooler to practice apple counting too!
Check out my MATH SKILLS page for more math worksheets and ideas.
Apple theme books, crafts, and STEM activities for preschool
Fall is just around the corner and I love to do apple-themed things this time of year. Here is a list of some of my favorite apple books for preschoolers and kindergarteners: a tissue paper craft, a yummy apple STEM activity, and a fun apple counting idea to do with pompoms. And no apple themed activities would be complete without an apple taste test — try different kinds of apples and see which one is your favorite!
Apple Books:
1.The Apple Pie that Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson — I love Lauren Thompson’s books! This is a cute story about everything that goes into making an apple pie. As the story progresses, your child will notice more and more animals after the delicious pie! Thompson creates a cumulative and lyrical text that teaches preschoolers about nature and the apple’s life cycle.
2. Apple Picking Day by Candace Ransom — Ransom’s trademark short story with great pictures makes this book a good choice for kids who can’t sit still for long stories. The family goes apple picking and the reader gets to enjoy the fun with them. Preschoolers will get caught up in the excitement as the brother and sister race against other kids in the orchard to see who can pick the most apples.
2. 10 Apples Up On Top by Dr. Seuss — in this funny, rhyming book, a lion, a tiger, and a dog compete to see who can stack apples on their head and do tricks without the apples falling! While they keep trying to outdo each other, the animals inadvertently find themselves in a bear’s home. The bear is not happy with their shenanigans and chases them out. The animals run into more bears and more trouble. The bears chase the animals (who still have apples still stacked on their heads) into an apple cart! Now everyone has 10 apples up on top 🙂 Your child laugh at this silly story and enjoy the animals’ crazy antics. Plus, this books offers a fun way to incorporate counting!
3. Ouch by Ragnhild Scamell — in this story, an adorable hedgehog gets an apple stuck its back. Now hedgehog can’t fit into its den and winter is coming. The hedgehog’s animal friends try to help and get the apple off, but each attempt ends up with more things stuck to the poor hedgehog. After squeezing, and swimming, and rolling around, hedgehog and friends are running out of ideas. Fortunately, along comes a goat with a big appetite and eats all of the things that are stuck on hedgehog!
4. Aaron Loves Apples and Pumpkinsby PD Eastman — Fall is here and Aaron the alligator loves everything about it. He loves the yummy apples, pumpkins, football, Halloween costumes, and spending time with his friends. When his friends go apple picking, Aaron tells them that he knows a better way to get the apples down. Aaron shakes the tree, causing all of the apples to fall down on him! Oops 🙂 Now all of the apples are down and Aaron and his friends can enjoy them together. This book is part of the beginning reader series, I Can Read. It has short sentences with few words per page, making it a good choice for kids who are learning to read, and for those who do not want to sit through long stories.
5. Apples, Apples, Applesby Nancy Wallace — in this cute story, the bunny family goes apple picking on a lovely fall day. Farmer Miller teaches the bunnies all about apples. Kids will love learning all about apples with the bunnies. The book includes a applesauce recipe too!
6. 10 Red Apples by Pat Hutchins — everyone loves apples, including all of the farm apples. The apple tree starts with 10 red apples on it. Soon, one-by-one, a farm animal comes along and eats an apple off of the tree. The farmer eats the last one, and his wife didn’t get to enjoy a yummy apple! Oh no! Not to worry, the wife knows where to find more 🙂 This story has bright pictures, large, bold numbers on each page, and makes it easy for preschoolers and kindergartners to practice counting apples.
7. Adding Apples by Nick Rebman — this nonfiction, early math book is a great choice for preschool and kindergarten apple-themes. The child in the book leads the reader through a series of age-appropriate math problems with apples 🙂 My son liked counting the counting all of the apples on the page and announcing the answer to me! Plus the pictures in the book do a great job representing different colors in the apples.
Tissue Paper Apple Craft:
Tissue Paper Preschool Apple Craft
To make this tissue paper apple craft, you will need a piece of white paper, a pencil, a glue stick, and tissue paper in red, green and brown (or orange). I drew a rough outline of an apple on a piece of paper. Next I cut red tissue paper into 1-inch squares.
My son and I both scrunched up the red tissue paper squares together — great for preschool fine motor skills. After we had a lot of of tissue balls, my kiddo covered his apple shape in glue. Then he stuck the tissue all over his apple.
After covering then entire apple in red tissue, we scrunched up green tissue. We glued the green tissue balls in a leaf shape. Even after adding the green leaf, my son still thought his apple was missing something. He decided to add an orange stem (I didn’t have brown tissue paper).
His apple turned out pretty cute! We really enjoyed doing this craft together and I love that he added his own creative ideas with the stem.
STEM Activity:
Apple STEM activity — using our 5 Senses
Activities:
Apple Counting:
Preschool Apple Counting Activity with flashcards and pompoms
Tactile counting with pompoms really helps conceptualize numbers. For this activity, preschoolers will add red and green pompoms to their apple tree to show the same number of apples as is listed on their flash cards. I made numbered cards and an apple tree that you can print. This activity can used over-and-over again as no glue is involved. Just draw a card, look at the number, and place the corresponding number of “apple” pompoms on the tree!
For this activity you will need to print off the flash cards and cut them out; print off the tree page; and have 10 pompoms in red and green. Click on the link below for your flashcards and tree:
Whether you live near the ocean or not, you can enjoy beach-theme books and activities with your little one at home. Check your library for beach-theme books!
Beach-theme books and activities
We made it to the beach! And of course, we had to bring some of our favorite beach-themed books with us 🙂 Books, waves, sandcastles, and lots of splashing made for a great time!
Enjoy some of our favorite beach-theme books and activities with us!
Beach-Theme Books—
Duck and Goose Go to the Beach
Duck and Goose are some of our favorite picture book characters! My son has loved them for years (and I’ve loved them even longer!). We’ve been reading Duck and Goose stories since he was a baby. Their books come in a board book format that was perfect for when my kiddo was in the grabby stage, and now that he’s older, we read the picture books. We have actually brought Duck and Goose go theBeachand the stuffed animals to the beach with us a few times now 🙂 In this book, the two friends set off on an adventure and find themselves at the beach! But do they actually the sand, sun, and waves? Read it and find out 🙂
How to Catch a Mermaid
My son LOVES Adam Wallace’s How to Catch a Mermaid!It’s a fun book about 2 kids and dog who hatch all sorts of plans to catch a mermaid because who wouldn’t want to have a mermaid friend, right!?! Spoiler, the kids get themselves trapped instead and the mermaid saves the day! This book has rhyming text and bold, bright pictures that compliment the fun story. This has been one of my son’s favorites for a over a year now and we hope you like it as much as we do!
The Sandcastle that Lola Built
The Sandcastle that Lola Builtby Megan Maynor– based on the “House that Jack Built” story, this is a cute book about a little girl’s beach day. In this great example of teamwork, Lola and her new friends work together to make a sandcastle for mermaids. Fantastic pictures and rhyming text make this book a winner!
After reading this, we had to make our own sandcastle 🙂 And just like in the book, the tide washed away our castle too!
Inky’s Amazing Escape
Inky’s Amazing Escapeby Sy Montgomery — my kiddo loves this book! It is a true story about an octopus named Inky, who escapes from an aquarium in Australia and makes its way back to the ocean. We learned a lot about octopuses from this non-fiction picture book, and we were fascinated by Inky’s journey. My son was so excited when he learned that Inky liked playing Legos just like he does! Out of all of the books written about Inky, this one is our favorite. Sy Montgomery is a gifted storyteller and we were absolutely fascinated by this amazing octopus. I check out lots of library books for my son and I to read together, but this is one book that we felt that we needed to own. We truly love this story and read it over-and-over again.
Over in the Ocean
My son got Over in the Ocean: in a Coral Reeffor his birthday recently and it is AWESOME! It has fantastic pictures that were formed from clay by artist Jeanette Canyon that perfectly compliment Marianne Berkes’ sing-songy text. You and your little one will want to study these pictures over-and-over again to get all of the details incorporated onto each page. This book introduces a variety of cool sea creatures. It also lends itself well to movement activities that preschoolers will love to do. At the end, there is a seek-and-find activity to search for all of the sea creatures from the book, as well as a sneak-peek into the clay creations. We had so much fun reading this at the beach!
Beach Day!
Candace Ransom writes great beginning-reader books. The text is simple, but not boring and the pictures capture the joy of the kids’ adventures. In Beach Day!the family heads out to enjoy the beach together. The book captures the fun, excitement, and joy of family outing at the seashore. The kids gather seashells, build a sand castle, and see some neat sea creatures. As you read this one with your little one, you just can’t help but get caught up in the fun! Be prepared to read this multiple times 🙂
The Snail and the Whale
Another one of our favorite authors is Julia Donaldson; her books are perfect for preschoolers and kindergartners! For our beach-theme stories, my son and I read A Snail and a Whale. A snail yearns to explore in this rhyming book. However, snail finds that its explorations are hindered by its size. When whale offers to help snail take a journey, it is a dream come true. Snail enjoys adventuring with the large whale. Uh-oh, whale gets stuck and it is up to the small snail to help its new friend. This story goes to show that no matter how small you are, you can still help others.
Beach-Theme Activities —
To go along with our beach stories, my son had fun doing a beach and an ocean-themed I Spy challenges and an ocean-themed Find The Differences worksheet.
SPOUTING WHALE: this turned out super cute and my kiddo really enjoyed making this.
Spouting Whale
Supplies needed are white and blue construction paper, pencil, scissors, blue tissue paper ( 1″ x 1″ squares), glue stick, white school glue, and googly eyes.
1. I drew a whale shape on the blue paper and cut it out.
2. My son used a glue stick to glue the whale onto the white paper. Next he rubbed the glue stick all over the bottom of the paper and glued on the blue tissue paper squares to make the ocean water.
3. Together, we wadded up the blue tissue paper squares to make the water spout.
4. Using the white school glue, I added glue dots in the pattern of the whale’s water spout and then my son added the wadded the tissue.
5. To complete his craft he added the googly eyes.
TOILET PAPER ROLL OCTOPUS:
My son loves Inky’s story so much that we decided to make an octopus craft.
Inky the Octopus
Supplies needed are an empty toilet paper roll, washable paint, paintbrush, kid safety scissors, googly eyes, and a marker.
-First we painted the toilet paper roll red. (use whatever color you want). Then we let it dry.
-After it dried, my son made cuts in the bottom of the toilet paper roll to make 8 legs. He gently pulled each leg up so that they legs splayed out and his octopus could stand.
-Then he attached the googly eyes and drew a mouth, and our cute little octopus was ready to explore our house!
Hope you enjoyed our beach-theme books and activities!
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Letter D is awesome — Dinosaurs, Dogs, Donuts, and Ducks! This was a fun week for my preschooler. We read books about his favorite animals, ate donuts, danced along to We are the Dinosaurs, and made a neat Froot Loops Tower.
Monday — D is for Dinosaur
Writing Practice: write uppercase D. For this letter, we used a worksheet from AtoZteacherstuff.com:
Book: Crunch the Shy Dinosaurby Cirocco Dunlap. This is a fun, interactive book that really engages with the reader. Young children will have a blast getting to know Crunch by saying hello, singing Happy Birthday, and introducing themselves. It also encourages the reader to take into consideration that other people (and dinosaurs) might be shy when you first meet them and to let them have some quiet space to adjust to new people.
Check your library for Crunch, the Shy Dinosaur, or buy it on Amazon.
Craft / Activity:Dinosaur Coloring Page — use your creativity and color or paint an awesome dino picture! Then, Find 5 Differences between these 2 dinosaur scenes:
Song: This was great excuse to sing along to our of my favorite preschool songs, We Are the Dinosaurs by the Laurie Berkner Band. Watch the music video on YouTube and march along!
Tuesday —
STEM: Build a Froot Loops Tower. This project is great for working on fine-motor skills!
Froot Loops Tower
Supplies needed are Play-Doh, a dry spaghetti noodle, and Froot Loops cereal.
First, make a mound out of Play-Doh to use as your tower’s base.
Second, stick a spaghetti noodle into the center of the base and make sure to really smush the Play-Doh around the bottom of the noodle so that it stands up.
Now it is time to make the tower and work on fine motor skills! Take your Froot Loops and carefully drop each down the noodle, making a tower as they stack. Have fun making color patterns. Bonus, you get to eat the cereal after your are done making towers 😉
Air Writing: Ask your child to hold up a hand and trace letter shapes with their finger in the air. I was skeptical of this at first, but my son really got into it and I found him air writing his letters all on his own.
“Dog I Spy” Worksheet: practice counting with this cute dog-themed I Spy picture.
Books — We read dog stories! My son loves Karma Wilson’s book, A Dog Named Doug. Doug the dog is a digging machine. He digs a holes to everywhere and gets into a bit of trouble along the way. The book ends happily with Doug digging a hole into his family’s bedroom for a bedtime cuddle. My son loves this book and he laughs every single time we read it. We have checked this out from our library numerous times, and we hope you will check it from yours too! It is also available on Amazon if you want to buy it.
We also read Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Dog a Donut. Turns out if you give a dog a donut, a great story ensues! This cute story is a fun read-aloud and good introduction to sequencing. Find a copy at your library, or buy on Amazon.
Craft — Paper Plate Donut. Supplies needed are paper plate, light brown watercolor paint and paintbrush, construction paper (we used pink), scissors, white glue, and sprinkles.
1. First my son painted the entire plate light brown.
2. While it was drying, we picked our construction paper for the donut icing. We went with the classic pink for our donut, but also strongly considered brown for a chocolate icing. I cut out a wavy shape in the pink paper.
3. After the donut plate was dry, I cut out the center to give it the donut shape.
4. My son used white, school glue to attach the icing to the plate.
5. Last, he glued on sprinkles to complete his paper plate donut 🙂
Songs — For letter D, we sang the “Donut Song.” If you don’t know this song, you can check it out on YouTube. My son loves this song and he sings it all of the time!
Thursday —
Salt Tray Writing: cover the bottom of a shallow tray or pie tin with a layer of table salt. Your child can take one finger to trace letter shapes in the salt. Make bother uppercase D and lowercase d.
Worksheet: Draw a line from the lowercase d to all of the uppercase D letters.
Book:Little Quack’s New Friendby Lauren Thompson. The whole Little Quack series is adorable, but I am partial to this one because I love the new froggy friend. This Little Quack story embodies preschooler’s shyness about meeting new people, but children’s innate playfulness and curiosity wins over and everyone has fun playing together. Plus, this story is full of fun sound words to say!
There are many cute stories in the Little Quack series. Hopefully your library has this one and others. It is available for purchase on Amazon.
Craft: Color and Feathers Duck Craft — supplies needed are duck coloring sheet, crayons, white school feathers, and glue.
Here’s the coloring page we used. I found on getcoloringpages.com. Feel free to draw your own duck or cut out a duck shape from construction paper if you don’t like this one.
We used crayons to color our duck. My son worked hard to color within the lines!
Then we picked out feathers for our duck and attached them with white, school glue.
Song: Raffi’s Five Little Ducks. I really enjoy doing hand movements to this song. We hold up fingers on one hand for the five little ducks, folding down fingers as the ducks go over the hill. The other is our mama duck and we keep our fingers together and move them up and down to touch the thumb to make a mouth movement for the quacking parts. If you don’t know this song, it’s available on YouTube.
